“Thank You for Helping Us Grow” Teacher Gift

Teachers are awesome, and as a former teacher I can tell you that while it’s really nice to get gift cards or some cash as an end of the year thank you gift, it’s also really nice to get something personal to help you remember your class. (I can also tell you we have enough mugs. Thank you. We don’t need any more)

Last year I organized this class teacher gift for my son’s kindergarten teacher, and the same idea could be easily modified to be a thank you gift from an individual student.

Materials:

Instructions:

Paint the planter, or whatever holder you have chosen, as desired. I decided to use indoor/outdoor paint because at some point the teacher may want to use this for real live plants, or she may want to use it to hold books or something in her classroom.

Place craft foam blocks into planter.

Cut green construction paper into thin strips and curl around a pencil to make grass like filling.

Send home a letter like this one to the parent of each child in the class. My letter contained a half sheet of colored paper for the child trace a hand print, and the green heart shaped leaf, on which I had written “I learned”. At home, the children traced their handprint on the colored paper, and wrote their names on the handprint. They also wrote something they learned that year on the green heart shaped leaves. The parents sent the completed pieces back to me via their child’s folder. You can download and use my letter if you would like to.

I then glued to the hand prints and leaves to the skewers to make “flowers” for the planter.

Finally, I printed out the words “Thank You for Helping Us Grow” and taped them on to the planter. I wrote the class and year on the back of the planter as well.

This project could be from a single student if you just purchased a small pot and had your child decorate it and add his/her “flower”. Or you can organize it as a class project like I did. I bought my planter at JoAnn Fabric with a coupon, and a package of multicolored cardstock at AC Moore with a coupon, so the whole project only cost about $20.